Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality: Explode the Myths, Heal the Church.

Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality: Explode the Myths, Heal the Church. By Jack Rogers. Louisville KY: WJK, 2006. Pp. xiv + 169. Paper, $17.95.

Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality is a powerful statement by one of the most dedicated and respected leaders in the church today. Jack Rogers, professor emeritus of the San Francisco Theological Seminary (SFTS) in Southern California, was (annual) moderator of General Assembly of The Presbyterian Church (USA), its highest office, in 2001-02. As he points out in the preface he is not gay, nor is any member of his family gay. Because of that, he never questioned the general position of the church on homosexuality until he was asked in 1993 to join a task force to address the issue. He was opposed to the ordination of gay and lesbian people, and so had to be persuaded even to join the group. The task force comprised people in favor and those, like Rogers at the time, opposed. Rogers signed a letter, with about 200 others, regretting the very decision to study the issue; the results of such a study he felt would be obvious. As he delved into the issue, however, he began to see the other side. As he says in this book, "The process was both very serious and painful. I wasn't swayed by the culture or pressured by academic colleagues. I changed my mind initially by going back to the Bible and taking seriously its central message in our lives" (p. 15). And that is the burden of this book--the central message of the Bible for our lives.

Rogers sees a pattern through the history of the church of misusing the Bible to justify oppression--using it to condone slavery and segregation, oppose women's rights, and deal with the issue of divorce and remarriage of Christian people. Most Christians during that time "accepted slavery and the subordination of women with not a hint that there was any other view in the Bible" (p. 18). In each of these instances, Christians "had accepted a pervasive societal prejudice and read it back into Scripture" (p. 18). In each case also, he might have added, it was progressive society and progressive Christians that led the way to social justice and not the churches!

Chapter by chapter Rogers takes the reader through each of these cases, showing how the church misused the Bible, and then how it changed its mind. One of his findings was that the church, especially the Presbyterian church with its Scots heritage, used the Scottish idea of "common sense" to justify abusing the Bible to support societal prejudices. He credits Neo-Orthodoxy and the biblical theology movement, which came to the United States after the First World War, with dispelling the idea of "common sense," which simply amounted to espousing popular prejudices in the courts of the church. The result was the Confession of 1967, adopted by the United Presbyterian Church (in the North) as valid alongside the several earlier confessions, including the venerable Westminster Confession. He feels that the theological result was a Christocentric ministry of reconciliation for the church as a whole. He asserts that the Confession of 1967 brought about convictions in the church of the equality of all races and the equality of women and men in the church.

Rogers's arguments that "conservatives" have abused and misused the Bible to claim its support of inequality and social prejudice is the most powerful I have seen. His review of the biblical passages usually cited to support prejudice against the call of homosexuals to ministry is as strong as I have seen. The claim that homosexuals are a threat to the institution of the family is a smokescreen (my term) to hide the sins of those who make such claims--greed, self-righteousness, idolatries of the worst sort, arrogance in knowing what God is going to do next, and especially the claim that only they know the Bible and follow it (see Rogers, pp. 93, 103, 107, 118, 124-25). It is clear that they are again abusing the Bible as their predecessors did over and over on issues of slavery, segregation, women's rights, divorce and remarriage. They by the grace of God ultimately lost all those battles, but now seem determined to keep in the closet homosexuals who wish to obey a personal call to ministry. The institution of the family is threatened by the high divorce rate in the country, and the highest is in the so-called Bible Belt (71% in Oklahoma). It is clearly not caused by homosexuals, who simply want to claim their rights guaranteed by the constitution. As for the church, it has been ordaining "closeted" homosexuals for the better part of 2000 years; the irony is that it apparently has a problem ordaining people who are openly homosexual.

Rogers directs his arguments and suggestions for change to Presbyterians. But they should be read and heeded by Christians of all denominations, and especially those "community churches," which have charismatic preachers with no denominational checks on them, which against all evidence claim that the Bible is totally harmonious--a ploy that has the political value of claiming the support of the whole Bible for biased constructions imposed upon it.

Rogers' book is so strong and convincing that it is going to be attacked, and probably quite viciously. In my view, however, it knocks the props out from under those who in our day once more, as many times on past issues, deny the depth, height, and breadth of the gospel of the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

James A. Sanders 

Claremont Graduate School of Religion

Claremont, CA 91711